lucidation
of them, and sought to draw her to him, she pushed him away roughly, and
answered with angry scorn: "Sainted, you call the old man! As if I didn't
know that he was a master of all sorts of hellish arts and black magic! A
fig for such saintship!"

They were bitter words, and, like one who has been wandering in sunshine
and suddenly finds himself overwhelmed by blackest night, Zeno felt
himself deprived of strength, the floor seemed to rise, and his knees
trembled.

He grasped the phial, hoping to recover himself by aid of the pungent
odour that escaped from it, and even as he inhaled the contents, light
seemed once more to flood the darkness, and very erect, and with a
dignity of which he had not hitherto thought himself capable, he listened
to Rosalie's further words.

He grew very pale, and it was with difficulty that he restrained himself,
but he did not interrupt her as, forced by the power of the elixir, she
went on to declare, that she had accepted his offer of marriage merely
because he was sufficiently presentable, notwithstanding his humble
origin, to enable her to walk or ride with him about the city without
feeling humiliated; that she had hoped and expected to find great wealth
by means of which as his wife, she could lead the life that she enjoyed,
and be able also to help her father to bring up her younger brothers and
sisters in a fashion befitting their rank; that on the contrary she had
found him only rich enough to secure her own comfortable existence, and
for this she had chained herself to a turtle dove whose eternal cooing
was beginning to weary her beyond endurance; that now her last hope of
the riches, which one had a right to expect in the house of a magician,
had vanished, and that if it were not for the gossip of the townsfolk,
she would return to her father's house.

With this statement Rosalie stopped and looked around her, frightened by
her own frankness, which she now recognized as unwise and fatal to the
last degree.

The unlooked-for and dignified reserve of her injured husband, together
with his ghastly paleness disturbed her, and her inquietude grew to
painful anxiety as he maintained silence. At length he said "I have
learned to love you truly and passionately, my wife, and now you show me
how you have returned the affection which my heart bestowed upon you. You
are right when you accuse me of having laid too much stress upon vain
trifles. For that very fault I have bee